Faith Online!

The Internet is becoming a literal House of Faith for Many! Do you agree with the excerpt below?

Click Here to Read Entire Article from The Denver Post

 

 

 MIAMI — Every Sunday morning, while hundreds of congregants converge on Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, Fla., Stephanie Smith boots up her computer and joins the services — from 1,400 miles away.

Instead of attending a bricks-and-mortar church near her home in Fort Worth, Texas, Smith hooks her computer up to her big-screen TV and watches a live, Web-based videocast via Flamingo Road’s “Internet Campus.” Some Sundays, she invites family and friends to join her.

“I didn’t want to leave Flamingo,” said Smith, who moved from Davie, Fla., to Fort Worth in July to be closer to family. Thanks to the Internet campus — www.flamingoroad.org, which had about 500 participants on a recent Sunday — “I still attend the services and still feel like I’m a part of everything that’s going on with the church.”

Smith is one of a growing number of Americans for whom the Internet plays a central role in their spiritual lives.

Among evangelical Christians, and the largest “megachurches” in particular, many pastors are taking their Web sites far beyond an online ad with a schedule of real-world services.

Many pastors are coming to see the Web site as a ministry in itself, not only as a way to bring people to church, but as a way to bring them to God — even if they never set foot in the physical building.

“This is not an attempt to get people to come to church,” said Rod Pearcy, who oversees a dozen Web sites for Fort Lauderdale’s Calvary Chapel (www.calvaryftl.org). “It’s not that Calvary Chapel has all the answers. What Calvary Chapel is about is teaching people the Bible, because the Bible has all the answers.”

While most houses of worship now have Web sites, few use them as aggressively and creatively in seeking new converts as evangelicals, for a variety of reasons.

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